Dreams Can Come True
I'm no pretty-handwriting-in-a-pretty-journal-while-sipping-tea writer.* I like coffee in big mugs that make a statement on the side, and I use 70-sheet, one-subject, twenty-notebooks-for-a-dollar spiral-bound notebooks. And I eat pretty stationery for breakfast. (Okay, not really.)
Christmas 2005, an acquaintance gave me a lovely journal. It had an iris on the cover, and music notes, and gold writing. It wasn't my thing, but it was too pretty to give away. So when I felt the need to do something different, that journal was near at hand.
On 1/15/06 I wrote inside the front cover the date and the title: Dreams to Truth Journal (Yes, I felt the need to write that it was a journal.) Below that, I wrote Because I am an excellent writer and I deserve to be published.
I needed to say that, to tell myself that. I felt stagnant. Stuck. Another vacation had slipped by without my accomplishing anything I meant to do. I needed accountability. I needed to write it down. The goal was some progress recorded every day. Every single day--I felt I'd waited long enough to get my butt moving.
Believe in Yourself
When I was a kid, I was made fun of by other kids. I don't know what I did to them. I was always nice to everyone, and I was painfully shy so I kept to myself most of the time. But for some reason, people found things to laugh at. They also pulled some horrible pranks on me: once, they locked me in a closet (and to this day, I'm terribly claustrophobic); another time, someone tried to set my long hair on fire. These weren't harmless pranks, and they hurt me badly. For years, I existed as a joke, not a real person with real feelings.
As you can probably guess, my self-esteem was non-existent. When I was fourteen, I contemplated suicide. Going to school was traumatic and not fun. I had no real friends, no one to talk to or to care about me. I was nothing. I was worse than nothing.
I was a freak.
All I wanted was to be accepted. To be acknowledged as a person and not treated like crap. I wanted people to look at me and see me, not the girl who's the butt of jokes or my imperfections. I was convinced that I'd never find that, that it just wasn't possible.
Enter Job's Daughters.
Death's Full Circle (Or Why I Watch My Back Now)
I took my dad out to lunch recently for his birthday. As we talked, I was struck suddenly by how old he looked. Okay, I'm no spring chicken myself, so this is hardly shocking. But I looked at him and could see shades, substantial shades at that, of my grandfather. He seemed smaller, even, I dare say, wizened.
This Self-Publishing Adventure
Why do people let me near the blog? They should have patted me on the head and then taken away my keyboard.
Do you like the logo? I drew it and then gave it to more talented people than me to make it pretty.
Anyway.
